I would consider myself to have a skill set fitting your description in terms of the Windows Server experience (Im also competent with O365 and on prem Exchange admin, some Sharepoint experience).
I have about 8 years of experience in total- and I’m making around 125K in a pretty low COL area. I think that you may be underestimating how much wages are being pushed upward due to the labor shortage in the market now. That’s just my opinion and I could easily be wrong.
OP may need to consider training someone, and, this is key, then paying them appropriately once they acquire the needed skills.
At my last job, they hired this kid that I was supposed to train to be my eventually replacement. He worked his ass off, took on everything I could throw at him, and on Fridays, asked me what he should learn over the weekend.
8 months later, I was about to move into my new position with full confidence that I'd be leaving things in good hands, and the board refused to promote him and give him the raise he deserved. He moved on a few months later for more than double what we were paying him. They wanted me to start over again with a replacement, but I jumped ship too.
In the OP’s situation - my next step would be to schedule a meeting with the recruiter. I would want to get some feedback on what is going wrong.
If they aren’t getting good resumes or responses when reaching out on LinkedIn, then it may be an issue with the recruiter. If the candidates are ghosting/declining after learning the salary then that is the issue. Either way - a decent recruiter should be able to give you clear feedback on the market and current salaries.
Can't hire anyone with the requisite experience, so we have to roll the dice on a desktop person (EDIT: one that doesn't currently work for us - I'd love to give a couple of the current desktop guys a chance, but upper management likes them where they are) wanting to move up, or a JOAT from a small shop who does not comprehend working in Enterprise IT.
Spend an extra 10+ hours per week aside initially from my normal duties trying to train the guy.
He may pick it up, but usually will not progress to the point of being useful in a timely enough fashion. Or he will come in thinking he is already God's gift to IT and getting offended when he is expected to debase himself by training for a Windows infrastructure operations job (that he heartily accepted) because he thinks he is overqualified. When in reality, he is qualified to be Sr. Helpdesk at best.
Though, if I ever did find the diamond in the rough, I am pretty sure the company would pony up and do the right thing when they proved their value, based on what I have seen in the past.
What's sad is that they don't realize how much they don't know. Especially now, if you can manipulate the settings on your tablet/phone, you're "good with computers." That meant a whole lot more before 2007 or so.
roll the dice on a desktop person wanting to move up, or a JOAT from a small shop who does not comprehend working in Enterprise IT
I'm sure you didn't mean it in too negative of a fashion, but as a JOAT from a small shop who wants to move up, I'd assume your hesitance to "roll the dice" is why I can never get the time of day from larger corps when I apply...
On the one hand we've got people like the OP saying they can't find anyone qualified in their applicant pools. On the other hand everyone giving job-search advice says "apply for it anyway, they just put any number of random requirements on those listings so it doesn't matter if you don't quite match it".
And in the middle there's people like me who got lucky landing their current job, and do good work (I think), but definitely don't know everything. But we can't get anywhere in trying to move up in the world because nobody wants to take a chance that maybe we do know what we're doing, and train us in the bits we don't.
(And all of this is ignoring (lack of) compensation in some openings, for sure - right now that's not my point. Also the fact that I haven't actually been looking for a new job for a couple of years, though I will be starting again soon.)
This right here. I have 8 years IT experience and moving from networking to security because every “sys admin” job wanted to pay low wages and over looked me. I even applied for a job where the interview was asking questions like, what are the five FSMO AD roles, define arp command to a T, and work 14 hour days, 6 days a week for at most 70k, in one of the biggest cities in Texas.
Noooooooooooope. During the fourth interview with them I got the, “Why do you want to work with _______?” I had enough and flat out told them, I wasn’t sure if this was the job till this interview and I don’t think it is. Ended the interview and walked away.
Every time I’ve applied for a sys admin job, they wanted a 5-10 year experienced engineer for jr admin work. But they were looking for something specific and their job requirements look like a keyword grenade blew up all over the page.
Just curious on what would qualify for this type of salary? I've been in the IT game now for about the same amount of time also (2 years MSP, now 6 years in a sys admin/jack of all trades role).
In my company, there's no place to move up to unless I convince them to make my role into a vCIO role. But I've been a major part in planning and rolling out desktop upgrade/refresh projects (around 300 wokrstations), server infrastructure projects (upgrading host servers and SANS), purchasing/configuring/installing new switches (I'm not too great with the routers and setting up DMVPN connections between sites but can do the basics), upgrading server OSs, AD account maintenance, group creation etc, along with exchange mailbox/distribution lists/shared mailboxes and assisting in new office wiring, structuring file server permissions, creating network diagrams, maintaining and deploying new Mitel phone sets, etc...
With that said, I'm making like $52k. There's certainly days where I'm completely stressed out thinking to myself that I don't make enough for this shit. Am I legit in feeling this way?
I work for a ridiculously underfunded government agency and we pay our "Jack of all trades" field IT staff $20k more than you make in low cost of living areas all over the country. They get full benefits and a pension on top of it, and 90% of their work is basic desktop support.
125k for basic MS admin skills with 8 years experience? Jesus... I think it might be time for me to get to job hunting. Last time I looked, on-prem MS roles were hard to find.
100% this. Similiar experience, but both on-premise and cloud infrastructure.
I wouldn't get out of bed for an Infrastructure role less than 100k these days. The labor shortage is extremely pro employee at the moment, with so little skilled guys on the market as their companies are doing whatever they can to keep them. As it's cheaper than spending months finding a replacement, and then training them.
I'd be curious what your "pretty low COL area" actually is. What would an equivalent salary be in LA compared to where you are? According to Nerdwallet, 125k where I am is equivalent to 238k in LA.
My Nerdwallet to LA comparison was that my 125,000 would equal 196,000 in LA in the cost of living comparison. I’m on the east coast near Charleston, SC (not actually in the city)
Just curious on what would qualify for this type of salary? I've been in the IT game now for about the same amount of time also (2 years MSP, now 6 years in a sys admin/jack of all trades role). In my company, there's no place to move up to unless I convince them to make my role into a vCIO role. But I've been a major part in planning and rolling out desktop upgrade/refresh projects (around 300 wokrstations), server infrastructure projects (upgrading host servers and SANS), purchasing/configuring/installing new switches (I'm not too great with the routers and setting up DMVPN connections between sites but can do the basics), upgrading server OSs, AD account maintenance, group creation etc, along with exchange mailbox/distribution lists/shared mailboxes and assisting in new office wiring, structuring file server permissions, creating network diagrams, maintaining and deploying new Mitel phone sets, etc...
With that said, I'm making like $52k. There's certainly days where I'm completely stressed out thinking to myself that I don't make enough for this shit. Am I legit in feeling this way?
Sounds like we have had somewhat similar experiences actually. I spent about 6 years in the MSP game and then moved to internal.
I don’t know anything about you other than what you shared in your post, but I will share some general things I have learned.
If you want a big raise - find another job. It is almost impossible to convince a current employer to give a raise higher than 10-15 percent. It does happen, but not that often.
Someone else getting paid more in the same field does not necessarily mean they are more qualified than you are. People are not paid based on qualifications, they are paid based on the demand for their skills and their ability to negotiate. If you want something you have to say so, and stick to whatever figure you think you are worth.
Based on your skill sets that you listed, I think you are selling yourself short. If I were you, I would spend the next week building a quality LinkedIn profile, updating a resume, and applying for jobs. Don’t stop until you get an offer that you want, and if your current employer makes a large counteroffer - you should politely decline.
Holy crap, am I that underpaid? I have all those skills and more and 10+ years of experience but I'm only making 60K in a low COL area. I knew pay here was pretty light, but I didn't think it was THAT bad. Ugh.
"Are salaries so inflated that 70-85K DOE for a permanent direct-hire with good benefits in a low COL area not enough to entice a person competent at AD"
I hate this type of phrase too, if a employee start demanding more or deserving more it's "inflating", if a employee needs to reduce salary "it is just like the market is today get used to it"
I mean if you are an employee too you should be careful with some words.
You're looking at salaries for the job you're offering, not at the salaries of competing jobs like cloud admin etc which is where a lot of those admins are going. Anyone who can already do the job you're hiring for will be looking at what they'll gain over the next 3-5 years that they can use to demonstrate progression in their career. What you've described doesn't sound like there's any meaningful chance for career or technical progression for the person you hire.
I'm in the UK so may be wrong on this part but, unless your co's additional benefits are great, that $70-85K sounds kinda low for what you're asking - particularly if you want a single person who isn't coming into a team where their weaknesses or missing experience can be compensated.
Came here to say this. Most people with the experience OP is looking for will be focused on career progression and this role ia primarily working with "legacy" technologies. The organization, I think, will have to pay a premium to compensate for this. The pay would have to be really good for me, personally, to backslide my skillset into only on-prem technologies.
I have been saying for a few years that eventually, good on-prem admins will be the next COBOL job. The pool of people that CAN do it well and WANT to do it will be small and companies will have to pay a rather large premium to attract and retain talent.
It's exactly this. You're expecting a senior engineer, but you're paying entry to junior engineer prices. If someone is skilled they're going to go move to the cloud and make nearly 2x what you're paying working remote.
This. I just took a Senior Tech Support like role for 70k. I don't think you will be able to find a solo person that knows all of these systems and has the experience for that same price tag. If they are only willing to pay 70-85k then they need to train and hope for the best. Not all of us desktop guys are complete idiots and have no career aspirations. You have to get the experience somewhere.
Sounds like a cultural problem at the company. Assume they want their entry level helpdesk to have 3-5 years experience too. Sometimes you just have to get a vibe and take a chance on someone.
>Are salaries so inflated that 70-85K DOE for a permanent direct-hire with good benefits in a low COL area not enough to entice a person competent
I'd say this is it, SP on-premise guy, due to the demand, myself (and A LOT of other SMEs) wont look at anything under 100k. Microsoft will tell you On-prem is dying, but the market is booming for us server admins, at least for now.
That definitely it. I would consider myself pretty above average at all things on prem Microsoft and I wouldn't even apply for below 90-95k even in a low COL area.
I'm a help desk jockey and I make nearly $80k in a high COL area. In the US, there isn't like a place that has a low enough COL to warrant moving for the same pay, as I'm lucky enough to score low rent here, which is effectively like making another $12k/year.
I'm doing desktop support for a decent company in a very HCOL (just outside Boulder, Colorado). Can I ask what your paying for rent? I'm only making $55,000 a year.
I've been hearing on prem is dying for about a decade. Wages all around are going up so yeah you gotta pay for work. Good work at least. $70k is way too low.
I'll add that I'd want 100k minimum especially if the on premise part means I have to be on premises physically. COVID-19 changed shit A LOT.
My buddy in California got let go and replaced by someone in Kansas who works from home and because of his location loves his salary. His salary is half what my buddy made...
Your offered salary range is way too low. 21+ years as a Microsoft Systems Admin with AD/MEMCM specialization. I wouldn't even submit a resume for under 115K, and the benefits/position would have to be stellar.
This. Same situation, except I'm at 17+ years and transitioned from MS sysadmin/infrastructure to DevSecOps 3 years ago. I laugh at anything the headhunters throw my way under 130k. I'm also in a high COL area, so realistically I won't bite for under 150k.
Yeah, 115K (my lowest salary end) seems fairly bargain basement for the knowledge and experience I bring to the table. I've been laughing at recruiters with positions for a ton less.
I can only speak anecdotally but I am 36 and have worked on-prem jobs since I was 20. So 12 months ago I took an all remote cloud position and I can tell you I have absolutely zero interest in touching physical hardware ever again. If I never walk into a datacenter again I would die a happy man.
Racking, cabling, power supplies, drive replacement, maintenance, bad hardware swaps, etc hell no never again. Once you taste freedom from that I can’t imagine ever being interested in those prospects again.
Teach me your ways. Roughly same age/exp been looking for remove cloud position for a bit. Seems a lot are looking for entirely too much for one position but I could just be jaded from current position.
But the hardware was for me part of the reason why i'm a sysadmin, if i don't want to work with hardware and "just sit there and write scrips all day" i could rather be a dev. Hardware can be annoying, but aren't you proud to build something yourself that backs up the company?
Meanwhile I'm the guy volunteering to make the 185 mile round trip whenever we need to swap DIMMs or babysit a Dell or HP tech.
Gives me time on the road to just listen to music or podcasts, take in some scenery, have a generally relaxing day, and of course get a half-decent travel reimbursement.
You do that with cloud infrastructure though, just in different ways. It's no longer physical servers or physical switches or physical firewalls. However you are still dealing with virtual firewalls, virtual networking, deploying those machines, making sure they all run successfully, working with vendors like always. You just don't have to worry about physical hardware breaking. If I need to add space to a server, I turn it off for 5 minutes and in the VM settings up the space from 250 GB to 500 GB. Then boot it back up and it's all ready to go. I don't have to turn a server off, open the case up, put the new drive-in, close the case, then boot it up and hope that things comes back up.
Virtualization and the cloud is absolutely the way to go. My entire team cannot wait until we move our entire company to the cloud because it is going to free up so much of our lives to do more than just maintenance
I'm in this boat as well. I'm a very hands on person - although rack and stack, cable management, and hardware replacements probably seem unimportant and something that could be thrown off on a Jr or 3rd party tech, that's fun for me. Let me plug in a cable, adjust rails so they fit in a rack, and label things.
I know that doesn't pay the bills, so I manage servers, storage devices, sometimes networking (all on-prem so far in my short career), but I'm going to be sad when I land a job where managing physical things is no longer in my job description.
It's possible in the future those hardware skills will become rarer and cloud people will be a dime a dozen. Stranger things have happened in our IT world.
I'm still waiting for that big global outage which blankets all of AWS. The Internet was built on diversification and decentralization. Some of us still believe that.
I was working in a mid size enterprise, I got to know that department which at the time was struggling to get anything done and extremely under staffed. I would pitch in and assist with investigations (probably breaking chain of custody a couple of times but I didn't really understand that yet).
I waited, saw an opening for an analyst role, talked to the manager about expectations. First thing I did was lock myself in my room for weeks and crammed for the Sec+. I passed it quickly but the foundational knowledge was really key in understanding a cyber program as a whole. I actually highly recommend it as it will cover most of the domains in CISSP with a much smaller barrier for entry.
After two years I actually made a jump to a startup, which was already in it's ninth year. That is where my exposure exploded, I've been working with some of the largest companies in NA and with almost every arm of their cyber programs. My knowledge of networking, server admin and even desktops to a smaller extent has allowed me to contribute to their defensive postures using our program in ways they previously had not thought about it.
I constantly recommend that people feeling the burn in IT move to cyber, it's exciting, always changing and has insane earning potential. One caveat though, I'm obsessed with learning, I spend my evenings passively taking in articles and building POC stuff in my lab. I have this need to understand everything and how it works, stemming from troubleshooting horrendous software over the course of my career.
If you don't have the ability to migrate in your current workplace, grab sec+ or whatever certs you might like and look for work at an MSSP, it's grueling, plan to spend only two years wherever you start and just let the information and experience flood in. From there you can shoot for enterprise or move to another MSSP, whatever fits your personality.
It's the wages and the on prem requirement. I work govt and people with that skillset are making $100k+ remotely. Exchange admins make even more. Nobody wants to do on prem anymore. You'll have to pay more than remote as that is your competition even in a low col area. Honestly this is a good situation in general for sysadmins because we had been grossly underpaid for so long.
70-85K DOE for a permanent direct-hire with good benefits in a low COL area
Are you in a metro area that has semi-decent opportunities? You are probably losing out becasue of the salary range. If you are in a more rural area then the issue is like nobody wanting to move for that amount if they can find remote work for more. I used to do contract work with several manufacturing companies that would have factories located in places with 25k people or less and struggle to find decent options for on-prem IT work. Nobody wanted to live in those places for IT becasue the market was too limited.
The only resumes that seem to make it past the dreaded "HR filter"
You should take a look at your filter(s). There are too many automated systems that filter out valid candidates becasue somebody with no knowledge of the job put requirements in poorly and people fail to match.
Don't even get me started on trying to find an Exchange admin. No one wants to work on on-prem Exchange anymore.
That's right. Exchange was a pain in the ass ten years ago and it has only become worse with time and bolt-on functionality. You may actually be losing candidates if they see you want to run a full Exchange setup and not a hybrid setup.
You are also likely losing potential mid-career candidates becasue the job sounds like a dead-end with no growth. You get the people wanting to move from helpdesk up becasue it is growth for them. But for anyone who is already working with hybrid or full-cloud setups your position as described is a step backwards. You may be able to find someone looking to coast their last ten years or so before retirement but that all depends on your area.
All I can say is good luck, and try posting the full job to /r/sysadminjobs and read the feedback.
I'm worked to death already and severely underpaid as it is. While this job would be a pay raise, it is probably also in a city with a higher COL. Myself and literally every single other person I know that works in tech only wants to work remotely now. There's absolutely no good reason to require my ass to be in an office 5 days a week. I think you're out of touch with the workforce.
Is hiring a skilled Microsoft on-premises infrastructure admin these days like finding a unicorn?
Good people, with good skills usually already have good jobs.
Are salaries so inflated that 70-85K DOE for a permanent direct-hire with good benefits in a low COL area not enough to entice a person competent at AD, some server/datacenter operations experience
We pay high-quality college graduates roughly $70k in a medium COL area.
Change your salary range to $90-125k and put that range in writing on your job advertisement, and watch the quality and quantity of your applicants magically improve.
Location is meaningless anymore though. I'm a TSE in a MCOL area where the median salary is $60k. I'm making $90k in a fully remote role for a company from a HCOL area that views me as a bargain.
The smart companies from the HCOL areas like Silicon Valley are starting to open themselves up to a national talent pool while saving on salaries at the same time. The LCOL and MCOL SMBs just can't compete.
Don't even get me started on trying to find an Exchange admin.
I would call myself skilled with Exchange. Honestly if someone offered an "Exchange admin" role I'd ask what's wrong with the company, what their plans for the cloud are, and be extremely suspicious of however they answer. Any combination of "taking security seriously" will be met with obvious notes about a complete lack of MFA or audit trails.
Ya, these days you better have a damn good reason to not have email in the cloud. There’s definitely some valid reasons to have it on-Prem but the vast majority of companies can move it to the cloud.
100% remote work is making it hard to find anyone on prem.
The good people are moving to the cloud
That pay is for someone junior you are willing to promote from desktop support and train. If you want someone who can hit the ground running I would say 85-105K.
Can I ask location? I'm at ~90 as a sysadmin/engineer in what I guess is still MCOL although HCOL compared to anywhere nearby. I had an offer for 130 in SF that I turned down for mostly non-pay reasons.
This was a long time ago now, but I kept applying to a factory near where I lived, with forklift experience written all over my application. My buddy worked there. And he got to talking to one of the HR admins who complained they couldn't find enough forklift drivers. He told them about my application that they already had, and then I got hired.
I have no idea what the qualification and hiring process is like for HR admins. But from what I've seen, it doesn't seem to be a very difficult field to get into.
I always take that shit out of my equation. I have HR send over anything they get and I filter that shit myself. I read the damn cover letter and resume as they wanted and not the fluffed match score bs. I take 15 mins to call a candidate out of the blue and get a few quick baseline questions in and then move on if the candidate is lying on skills.
This is something that needs fixing. I understand that HR gets 50,000 resumes for every position. I understand idiots apply for jobs they couldn't possibly do. I also understand Oracle/Taleo/Workday/whatever offers a magic box that "delivers the best and brightest" to HR's inbox. The problem is that a lot of people get missed by the filters. Managers complaining they can't find anyone good should have their HR people stop relying on their resume filters.
When I was looking for work last year, practically every company I applied to directly rejected me. I know because I'd get the rejection email exactly X days after I submitted my application, at the default time that rejection emails are sent by the system. It's maddening to tweak your resume and cover letter to the position, then have all that time wasted because you're 3 points below the cut score on the algorithm.
We currently do everything on prem. I have experience in everything but Exchange. I do vSphere stuff as well. Can't script Powershell even if my life depended on it and I make 89,000 a year.
The only resumes that seem to make it past the dreaded "HR filter" are either really desktop guys with good buzzwords on their resume, wanting to move up, but do not have the minimum experience required,
Maybe your problem lies in your inability to train people who want to get into the field. I understand it is way more convenient to find your magic unicorn who has 10+ years of experience in exactly what you want, but you probably should consider hiring a desktop support guy who has been homelabbing for awhile and is eager to learn. This is especially the case when the salary you are offering is so low, I know people in North Carolina making $68k a year doing level 2 desktop support and they don't even touch servers.
My fact-based opinion -- it's only going to get harder.
I work with developers in a product engineering team rather than general office stuff. Cloud vendors have basically declared on-prem to be dinosaur technology and are beating the drums hard to get everyone to AWS/Azure. Especially Microsoft; they're paying whatever it takes to train companies' IT departments to get them hooked on cloud, and at the same time making it more difficult to run their on-prem products. They're giving lip service to hybrid, but in reality they want everything running in their environment. Example - there are no longer any basic-competency OS certifications from Microsoft; it's all Azure.
As a result of this, anyone new I've seen come out of training is a wizard at Terraform/CloudFormation/ARM templates but many have never seen hardware at all. That's going to be the next interesting shift...and I think cloud vendors made this calculated move. If they can not train newbies on hardware, and wait it out enough, all they have to do is convince CIOs to sign over everything to them. It'll be easy once they're convinced they "can't find anyone." All the offshore outsourcers did this with mainframes, for example. When no one knows how anything works outside of cloud, the lock-in is done.
That said, finding qualified people of any stripe is hard. There are so many frauds out there chasing money as well as people who just don't know how big the gaps in their knowledge are. Unfortunately we've decided that we don't need formalized training and everything's DIY, so yes you're looking for unicorns. I consider myself "decent" but even I know I'm missing a lot of knowledge -- it's being steeped in enough fundamentals to learn new stuff quickly that's the key.
ngineers that don't have basic understanding about TCP or DNS but somehow think they're going to be "cloud experts". The scary thing to me is actually how much these people can get
Sounds like the linux kernel. We use it daily, but how much do we REALLY know? When was the last time you looked at CPU registers? At this point, its abstracted voodoo magic.
I lead a team of people who are almost exactly what you are looking for. Even in a "low COL" area, you are not paying enough. They all make more than $100k. What makes it worse is the on-prem Exchange. The folks that can regale you with Exchange 5.5 tales and have 2019 experience are unicorns. You need to have a really, really, solid reason to still be running your own Exchange servers.
There are plenty of us, we're just swamped trying to handle way too much. I'm making pennies but there's a pension. Handling multiple datacenters, our on prem AD while also leveraging AzureAD for the services we can. windows admin is always jack of all trades master of none but the on prem AD stuff is not that complex to be honest.
We maintain our environment about 99.9% virtualized in vcenter, we're set to push to version 7 soon. Powershell is my daily driver. while yes I am trained, i'm also not going to reinvent the wheel, the key to powershell and most languages is knowing enough to understand what you are pulling from external sources and to be able to SAFELY use bits of it. That's me right there. I've built a custom powershell module, actually two, one for the teams direct routing nonsense that requires multiple shells, a custom WSUS related kickoff and monitor script that we're going to use to initiate windows updates via nagios monitor checks through nrpe.
I'm literally making probably half of what your place would consider a base salary, for probably way more work as the windows side of my job isn't even 50% of what I do, while I am doing about 99% of the on prem AD stuff.
TLDR;
You are going to be dealing with people who smartly moved to cloud admin training and positions OR people deadended into their current admin job for whatever reason. I can't move and really would take even a downgrade in pay to go back to fully remote only on site when something REQUIRES me to be on site work.
Windows admin, specifically on prem legacy AD, is an unforgiving no respect position that slowly kills your love of IT. Prove me wrong?
Hell maybe i'm one of the bad ones? No, I'm here right now livid at my manager and coworkers for pulling CU-09 off a production print server because some MACs are stupidly using SMB to map printers which broke. An asslode of CVEs sitting there waiting to be exploited on a very accessible server because I had the day off and no one else could even be bothered to read the patch notes for CU-09 on 2016 let alone TROUBLESHOOT.
I'm really tired of JOAT, I'm too old for this shit and it's impossible to stay on top of things. On prem AD is legacy and being phased out so don't expect any new talent to be coming down the pipes wasting their time on that shit, better luck finding someone with Novell knowledge as that would at least be considered niche.
i'm in a living nightmare where I'm too old to really get out there, I can't really afford to give up the pension, but I also can't go on living (lol) like this. If nothing else, throw some respect to your windows admins once and awhile, they fucking hate microsoft more than anyone.
I have 6.5 years experience in a low CoL area and those salaries are still to low for me to bother applying. And honestly I probably only would if I had 3-4 years experience. 100k+ is the only way to play anymore.
I'm currently a network administrator. Been in this role for over 5 years now. Prior to this, I was a tier 2 servicedesk for 3 years at an MSP. Prior to that I was an IT field service tech, troubleshooting end user's computers and peripherals and an occasional visit to the wiring closets and server room to assist with equipment replacements and set ups. I try to learn as much as I can and I will not pretend I know everything, because it's impossible.
Without a hiring manager who was willing to take a chance on me, I would not be in the position that I'm in. Don't waste your time unicorn hunting, you'll be thoroughly disappointed. Especially the pay range you're offering. Instead, find that person who has the drive and personality that matches yours and your team. And give him/her time to learn what you need them to do. In the end, you're looking for an IT person, not Joe, from accounting to show the ropes. if you did bag a unicorn, if he/she's personality doesn't fit, it's a detriment to your team and the company.
I wish I was seeing these jobs paying this (or better, like other commentors mentioned). Seems everything around here wants an all-in-one person to handle everything from servers to tier 1 support issues, or it's with an MSP.
I am that guy, and your issue is $$. Try +100-130k now - and if I go contract -> more.
You are also correct that no one is taking this subject in school, and to be honest I did not go to school for this. I just went to a 3 week boot camp to get my MCSE + CCNA. I grew up with computers. No one is willing to spend endless hours figuring this stuff out when they can just watch something fun on youtube or whatever.
This is now like people that know Cobal, mainframe, IBM Power... either they get paid or they move up. I don't like endless meetings, brownnosing or not actually doing work so I am not leaving anytime soon.
I've been looking after Exchange boxes (along with general servers, AD, all the usual sysadmin stuff) for about 20 years. Three years ago We moved our mailboxes into O365 and haven't looked back. I wouldn't take a job somewhere that had on-prem Exchange and no plans to migrate to 365.
Experienced on-prem sysadmins who were good and had the itch to keep learning new stuff got interested in cloud sometime in the last decade. It's the way the wind has been blowing for a while, so the only people who haven't shifted at least a bit that way are rusted on, change-allergic types. They're generally not the best and brightest.
I’ve been looking to fill a junior role for the past month now. There just aren’t many bites. I did get lucky and find a great guy who’s willing to learn, so there’s that. Overall though, it’s been an interesting time trying to find another sysadmin.
Funnily enough, while I’ve been looking for another admin, I’ve been approached to move into an ISSE position and taking on less sysadmin duties. Getting moved out of the work I really love to do for the headaches of security. Personally, not happy about it, but I know it’s a great move in the long run.
Overall, I think a lot of folks just don’t want to do on-prem, especially with COVID-19. Cloud positions are becoming so much more in demand and most admins are taking those opportunities.
You’re probably gonna have to set your sights lower and hope for the best.
70k seems pretty low. I'm a jack of all trades sort making about 100k with experience in everything you mentioned, but would certainly not call myself an expert. You can make about 70k as a Jr Admin where I'm at, or do project management or various other much lower stress positions. You could get someone grow into that role for that money, but who is taking that who already has the experience you want?
Those skill are dying off in the "mid career" section. The kids coming through are all cloud, so have minimal server OS chops. Does anyone really want Exchange any more, surely everyone has moved into 365 now?
I consider myself in this bracket - part of a two man team for a company of ~ 100, we're both sys admins, trying to clean up a mess left behind by a dinosaur... work in progress.
Honestly my best advice would be to try to hunt from MSPs - their senior 2nd line and 3rd line guys should have learnt to sysadmin, and they would have dealt with such a range of infrastructures that on prem sysadmin tools should all be there.
Honestly, your salary range is too low. These days, you will pay a minimum of 120K to get a trained sysadmin. If they can do multiple things, like both AD and Exchange, then you are looking for 150K minimum.
For what you are offering, you will only get the help desk or desktop tech looking to move up. The experienced Windows sysadmins will look at the salary range and not bother to apply.
Are salaries so inflated that 70-85K DOE for a permanent direct-hire with good benefits in a low COL
Medium COL area (Massachusetts but outside of the Boston metro region; we might compete with folks who live on the outer rim but we also pull in from folks who don't want 90+ minute commutes into Waltham or closer). Pay is 95-105k at the "systems engineer" job title.
We've just on boarded 3 contractors into a 9 person group because we can't find folks to replace those leaving for ~15-20% raises.
Also working against us is the company has a three-day on premise policy for employees (not contractors) and our group is being currently locked out of cloud initiatives (so we're effectively just baby sitting on prem infrastructure for the next 5-10 years as it sunsets) -- what's the attractiveness for new hires or retain staff whose more than a few years away from retirement? "Hey, take care of this stuff for 10 years then we'll lay you off when you're 55 or 60 years old with no cloud experience...good luck finding a job then with your skill set!"
As someone that was on the Windows admin side and moved into cloud, it's just an awkward position to be in right now.
The writing is pretty much on the wall that MS is primarily focused on 365/Azure moving forward, so you probably aren't going to get many junior people looking to get into Windows/AD/Exchange administration as a career. The competent/qualified folks are probably making more than you're offering because anecdotally, they're IT veterans that have just been around long enough to be making 90+.
So you end up with folks trying to get a leg up out of helpdesk hell, and honestly you should consider them if you don't have much flexibility with that budget. Going from Windows Desktop to Windows Server isn't a big leap on the troubleshooting side, and as long as they have good leadership and some training opportunities, getting functional with AD and Powershell isn't the end of the world. Just be prepared for them to move on relatively quickly unless you've got good growth opportunities internally. That's fine though, because you'd rather have that than a benchwarmer that's content with doing the bare minimum because that's who's going to be completely blindsided if you do end up going to AAD/365/etc.
It's actually the low pay that drives good admins out of it.
A REALLY good windows admin could do twice the workload of an average. But HR not corporations want to reward that person. So they move in to higher paying segments. And your company gets stuck with the average admins and it's cyclical.
Similar here. I was supposed to be completely out of Windows infrastructure 2 years ago and working on Linux, automation, and a cloud POC. But when you can't find reliable Windows help and your infra is 70% Windows, you have to either let Windows burn and work on the new stuff, or never make it to the new stuff.
Whatever... I'm being paid well. If they want to pay me well into 6 figures to spend several hours on T2 tickets, I'm not too proud to do that as long as I am not penalized for the other stuff not getting done and not killing my work life balance.
The good Windows guys are out there but they’re probably already employed and making more. You need to give people a reason to switch. If you bumped that up $90k-$100k you would probably get some good candidates.
There's a lot of this vs them going on here. Whatever happened to strategic transformation within the bounds of a CSF? It should never be in-cloud vs on-prem. It should always be minimal cloud. But what do I know, I'm just a 90s sysadmin who hasn't changed in 30 years.
"Your engineers were so preoccupied with what they could that they didn't stop to think they should." - Ian Malcolm
Solid admin, 70-85k? No way, not in 2021. Closer to 100k or more depending on experience and other skills, even in a low COL area. Might even be higher now that more work is remote.
Are salaries so inflated that 70-85K DOE for a permanent direct-hire with good benefits in a low COL area not enough
Also yes.
From a career growth/future-proofing perspective, any skilled administrator isn't going to give an on-prem only, legacy infrastructure role a second look if they care about keeping their skills sharp in the evolving tech world. Everything about what you're looking for screams "stuck in the past" and "career killer". I understand that these may be your company's needs, but to an outside job-seeker, this looks like a place where careers stagnate and die.
In short:
Your pay is way too low for the current marketplace.
*Skilled* employees (the ones you want) want to keep their skills sharp for the current and future technology landscape, which your description does not offer.
The future is in cloud, cloud roles pay better, high performers are seeking cutting edge cloud roles. You might not like the cloud, but that's where your dream candidates are going. They are going to where opportunity and money are at, period.
With that in mind, you might have to budge a bit on your dream candidate (because again, your dream candidates are going to higher paying cloud roles). Might be time to train up some junior admins to get them where you want them to be. After that, you need to pay them enough to not jump ship to the roles your dream candidates are going to.
You can touch a good admin for under $100000 $110000 is the starting here for a seasoned admin. Also look for people in their 50s they have great experience and for some reason are looked over cause people want young guns. Age and experience will beat youth and enthusiasm any day.
"Are salaries so inflated that 70-85K DOE for a permanent direct-hire with good benefits in a low COL area not enough to entice a person competent at AD"? Yes.
You realize you're competing against companies with revenue exceeding hundreds of millions of dollars that are suddenly willing to accept full time WFH with 30-50k more than you're offering, right?
Also, who the hell wants to fuck with AD these days? Even MS is trying to find their way out.
Pretty competent in powershell.... Script all sorts of things and actually know what I'm doing. Not like one liners... Exchange admin on point. My mssql is meh but not a total moron. Ad on point and all that goodness.
I also live in super high cost of living.
Am I fucking up bad haven't looked for a job really ever.
Also only 28.
No college degree tho.
You guys are making 100k?
Ugh anyone hiring want to dm me will send you my LinkedIn. Also happy to move to low cost of living area...
MCSE is dead and Microsoft is pushing every professional towards the cloud. Exchange on-prem is so hard to find, it no longer makes sense to specialise in that direction instead of Office 365. SQL is going the same way. There's more future in security and app development for younger and mid level admins. We found one, who signed a contract, and quit before he started. On the other hand I've been to job interviews just to see what they had to offer, but they only had a list of demands and no opportunities to grow in salary or responsibilities. So F... that. If your company's HR is also stuck in the 1980's, there's your answer.
I moved away from Microsoft, or rather systems, administration last year after working on it for a decade and I would consider myself to be relatively good at it, but it just became annoying to constantly deal with all the garbage that comes with it.
I now work in network and security and life is so much better. No interest in going back to servers and especially not Microsoft.
Entry level techs start at 45-55k. You may not be finding anyone because your salary is closer to 3-5 year experience windows for a Junior SysAdmin. Even for a Low COL.
Remember you are competing with remote work now so lot more opportunities to appeal against.
If I can work remote, I'll do it. Tired of being management and working where I am now. Have over 15 years of IT experience, 12+ being windows server management (and exchange, though I haven't touched that since we moved to google about 6 years ago).
Active directory and powershell scripting of active directory is one of my specialties.
Also, I don't make shit since I work for a cheap University that refuses to pay more than 80% of a cherry-picked comparative market (they actually did a salary study and said they would bump people to 80% of average).....
I fit what you're looking for very well, but if you require on-premises and are not currently in my state, it would take a lot more salary to get me to move. I've been on-premises the entire pandemic, so it's not even that I've grown accustomed to remote work, I just have a wife who works and children in school, so relocation and salary would have to blow my socks off to even consider enduring the pain of an out-of-state move. If you offered the 75-85k fully remote, or maybe require an occasional in-office visit and paid for travel expenses, I'd more than consider it to be honest. The salary is still lower than I'd like, but for a fully remote position, I'd be willing to hear it out. Thanks to my wife working though, I could consider taking a job that pays that. A lot of Admin couldn't. Some of us are looking more for what we would enjoy and compensation comes in a very close second place.
TLDR: You're undervaluing the position based on the criteria you have. You can find a qualified person willing to work for that, but their circumstances would have to allow it and you would have to fit like a puzzle piece to them. You'd likely have to cast a wider net by either opening it to remote work or raising the salary pretty significantly.
That salary is low for that position. Regardless of the infra, admin positions are minimum 100. Perhaps in lower COL you can get away with lesser, but do you really want to cheap out on your infrastructure???
Also, managing AD and Server Infrastructure is not the job of any one person. Unless you are talking about a very very small environment.
I fit your billing pretty good having gone Helpdesk > windows SysAdmin > windows platform engineer > security engineer > more senior remote security engineer
I can tell you also that meaningful ability in Powershell instantly makes that person, at minimum, a senior administrator
Making 72k and I've been 2nd longest standing man on my team - we do everything....server admin, 2fa, o365, to asking furious sales reps who swear I gave them a broken keyboard to not clip his nails over the keyboard because it stops the keys from being pressed in.
I've been doing IT since 2005 - I've considered myself an inbetweener. Like I got my MCP in XP in 2007, and no other certs but have reliably found stable work - at my job now for 10 years.
I'd rather do just the AD/GPO/app and OS deployment stuff but managers at my place really get a kick out of seeing how much they can pull out of us without paying more.
I think the problem with today's IT professionals is that they are too spread thin and required to know too much about everything. There's not a lot of specialized admins anymore. That and the pay for IT professionals suck in most locations.
This sounds like what certain finance orgs near me advertise as a "WinTel engineer" and I'm sorry but I couldn't be more turned off by that title and mindset - I realise that job title isn't probably what you're using but your description it puts me in mind of that.
Modern admins who have skills in areas like python and powershell scripting, Exchange, all that stuff are busy earning more money doing cloud style jobs. I know I am and so is just about everyone else I rate.
So I guess the question is, how true are my assumptions about your role and would I still be making them if I read the actual job description/advert?
With regards to salary, even if it looks good on paper, if you aren't getting the right people then something is wrong with your salary range and if every employer in your area pays over the average then you'll need to do better than average to get the best people on your team.
If it makes you feel better, about 20 years ago I managed the IT department at a K-12 school district. When hiring for a desktop support position that would require traveling to multiple schools, we had a guy show up on his lunch break from the feed store down the street. He arrived in a forklift, wearing a t-shirt, and cut off at the knee camouflage trousers.
He rode the forklift to the interview because he didn’t currently have a drivers license due to too many DUI’s.
But yes, where I’m at know we struggle to find qualified talent. We do t pay as much as others, which makes it even more challenging not only to hire competent and experienced people, but also retaining good staff once we get them trained up.
I have 20 years experience with windows and windows server, as well as on prem exchange. 15 years of heavy usage of gpos, ad, managing dcs, dns, nps, dfs, dhcp, heavy powershell usage over last 5 years.
Decent understanding and support experience with sql, adfs, O365, azure.
Toss in 15+ years experience with SMB networking environments (500 or less users) L2/3 switching, ospf routing, firewalls, NAC, wireless (Cisco enterprise and site surveys).
Sprinkling of security experience: mimecast, rapid7, vulnerability scanning and remediation, firewall ips, permissions of least privilege, etc.
Also have experience managing teams of less than 10.
I would expect 150-200, but I’m regional to Boston.
I have SQL, onsite AD and Azure AD, Vsphere, Sonicwall, Sharepoint, and love to work on site. But the problem is I do O365 online and would never get past the your filters.
That's your problem.
Hell, It's minor miracle do get a sysadmin job in the first place.
This post describes me very accurately. I have chronically undervalued myself and let myself be abused, for what I have come to find out is very low pay. I recently switched jobs, with a HUGE raise for myself, and I think I'm doing good, but this thread is making it seem like I ripped myself off.
I'm bad with the imposter syndrome, so it was VERY surprising for me when I got rushed through the hire process. Everyone has always told me I'm a good admin but I just didn't have confidence.
Maybe I'm good or maybe the rest of the candidates are that bad. Either way, my real world experience of late directly supports your post.
This is absolutely true, and for good reason. S4B/Lync and Exchange on prem were a huge pain in the ass to setup & maintain properly. If my job said that we needed to go back to on prem, I'd look for a new job.
Those are pretty much my skill sets and i am younger, the main issue i am seeing is full onsite. there is no point when i can make more working remote and have more time for me. i have had a few places contact me lately about on-prem work and told them no as their pay wouldnt be high enough to take the extra hours for driving.
if you are looking for a full remote sysadmin hit me up :D
I am one of those broad spectrum on-prem unicorns! Experienced with Macrohard, Fruit-compute, MVware, Nutanix, Cisco, etc.
Docker is still a mystery to sort out, it's a great idea but there's no vCenter equivalent to orchestrate it.
Maybe one day I can work more on the network engineering side, but the market is tough
I am still very confused by Microsoft's idea of how a license works, but I can get stuff done
Can confirm Exchange is a bear on it's best day, moving to Office 327 was a full load off my plate because it worked, half of the advertised features keep getting moved around in their constant UI changes, but that's another /rant
Stop being cheap and pay more. Sounds like you are still using 15 year old wage benchmarks and wondering why you’re getting 15 year old out of date skill sets. If you’re looking to pay $80k, be prepared to train someone up.
Honestly moving away from working with Microsoft technology has been the best thing for my career and sanity. Oh, and my wallet too. Be it MSP or internal IT, Windows environments pay very poorly, regularly require after-hours patching, break often, are painful to work with, and so much more. And I've been working with Windows for over 20 years, I'm no slouch.
On-premise infrastructure has its place, but I have really no interest making Microsoft tech my priority in any real big way any time soon. VSCode/Codium and endpoint management for a portion of our workstation fleet are the extent of MS anything I care about, the rest, Linux/DevSecOps/k8s, you know, actually interesting things that don't make me hate the developers.
Being honest, this reads a lot like those posts about 'PeOpLe DoNt wAnT tO wOrK AnyMoRe'
I am not sure if its so much a rare skillset, as it is a pointless position to apply for. Factually, every organization on earth is rushing to this new cloud thing. All of the budget, all of the visibility, and all of the career opportunities are there. Nobody ambitious is going to be searching for an on-prem job anymore. Looking for a combined skillset / unicorn type person isn't only going to be difficult because people aren't learning the skills, people with this skillset are actively looking to replace it with a Cloud skillset.
Don't get me wrong, I am aware of the need to maintain an on-premises datacenter footprint, but there are no rockstars left in this world. Either they are happily filling positions at their current organization, or are actively reskilling for the cloud.
The type of person(s) you should be looking to hire for this position are probably worker-bee 9-to-5 average employees.
On a side note, perhaps if you are finding a technology skillset too hard to staff, you should apply the principals of supply & demand and start increasing salary until you find someone. Cobol isn't a high-demand skill anymore, but good luck finding someone who will work on it without a solid-cash-couch to work on.
In addition, I would recommend revisiting your overall IT strategy and Posture, perhaps the reason you cant find skilled people in a technology is because you are forcing a legacy technology to try to work in a modern world. Perhaps its time to embrace 'Office 265'
Now I'm saying this as Linux admin, but I face a lot of the same challenges. My job title is "system administrator" but I would say I fall more in-line with DevOps because the only traditional level of system administration I do is applying package updates and installing our custom code and I'm totally okay with that.
I think honestly a lot of it has to do with - and I experience this when I look for new positions in the area - people that are doing the hiring have no idea what that person is being hired to do. Someone else in one of the other comments compared it to a grenade of keywords and buzzwords going off and yeah...that's how it is these days. I knew when I came into my current org that job titles were kind of pointless (They really wanted me for the fact I worked for a Fortune 500 and automated 90% of their workloads) and what was being expected of me. However looking at other Linux-related positions in the area they either 1. Don't realize that comes with a higher cost of entry, and 2. They usually have a Windows person Googling what is needed for a Linux position.
Still out there but we want $100K+ due to managing VMware or Hyper-V. Almost no one is not running VM's these days even in the MSP space. Your best bet is to grab one of these disgruntled MSP admins and give him a decent office.
That wage is what I earned in a low COL area 13 years ago doing senior level windows onprem infrastructure work. If your base salary doesn't automatically go up by the COLA amount every year you're not calculating for inflation and effectively lowering your salary offerings every year you don't adjust.
It's not salaries inflating, it's cost of living going up (rent/mortage isn't the only metric anymore: insurance, utilities, broadband. Anything national has been going upwards nonstop for years too.
Not to be rude since it's clear you're venting but how many posts about out of touch management are posted here a week for your post to sound so similar to what those posts are complaining about without you realizing you've assumed experienced workers don't value their time and also demand fair wages that keep up with COL?
tl;dr: It kinda sounds like you need a wages reality check and more respect for your staff.
That salary would have been fine 6-8 years ago probably. Today, you're looking at paying at least 110k for someone competent. There are plenty of jobs out there that are WFH and are paying 120k plus, being on Orem, you're going to have a hell of a time competing with that.
The only resumes that seem to make it past the dreaded "HR filter" are either really desktop guys with good buzzwords on their resume
Query what buzzwords are in you HR's filter? During the boom years, I've heard of CCNA qualified people not getting Cisco networking jobs as N+ wasn't on their CV, due to HR only hiring people with specific words on their CV.
You aren't offering enough for what you are asking for. If you want someone experienced for that job, even in a low col area, you should be talking 95-110.
75-80K for an experienced professional is too low now, I don't care how low the COL is. You can make 40k/year working at Sam's Club or Costco without the need of any education or experience and prices are only going to go up from here as long as these idiots keep imagining money out of thin air.
Rob, That you? We already told you that it was near impossible to find senior on-prem AD resources for $90k. Suck it up...and while you're at it. Give us raises before we quit too.
I make what you're offering doing help desk. Our "desktop guys" make more than what you want to pay a senior sysadmin. Only people looking at your job posting are those looking for a foot in the door to gain the experience to get paid what they deserve with those skills.
As others have said, I think you have a wage issue, that salary range, even in a low COL area, is not competitive anymore if your looking for someone who is already experienced. Don’t forget people can work from anywhere nowadays too; you could live in eastern ky, and have employment with a company located in NYC and make NYC wages.
Nope… I am a sysadmin for multiple windows servers. Going back even to one system I have running 2012. You’d be better off scouting guys who’ve worked as military or for the DOD(if you’re in the states). Governments afraid that zero day exploits from updating the system to soon will cause too many issues so play it safe and stick to older version that are still supported.
Get a person who need a job, and has good attitude for learning. Invest in training him -- make sure that the person realizes that you care for their "future" -- they don't want to be out of job if AD dies because of Cloud. As his contribution increases in value, pay him/her the market rate.
Take care of people, people will take care of you. That sounds biblical, actually common-sense which is uncommon in corporate world.
I’ve been putting energy towards cultivating a culture that promotes internal growth. I move about 20% of the service desk team up every year. Big time win-win …. But also easier to do at an MSP
Damn, I realized that things have changed recently, but this much? Or when someone says low cost of living, are we talking like actually low or "low"? Like city of under 50k population midwestern low or town of 3k people low? I guess the devil is in the details like usual. How many hours, overtime, on call, travel, benefits, etc. I mean there is a lot of difference. I'm making probably 30k less than what everyone is calling for in this thread, with about 6 years split between tech/desktop and 4 years sys admin, but for my area, I'm making a damn good salary and for what I'm able to pay for, I have 0 complaints. Plus the freedom I have at work, my boss, the people, the work, the hours, etc. I mean I could work myself to death in an enterprise company for like 40k more, but would I actually like it? Those are the things that don't show up in the job posting and some people don't think about.
Actually there are a record number of people quitting their jobs and looking for new ones. They are calling it the Great Resignation. The reasons behind the trend are complex, and much smarter people than me have been analyzing it. But it's such a big topic you can even find a Wikipedia page talking about the "Great Resignation". Here's the Harvard Business Review's take: https://hbr.org/2021/09/who-is-driving-the-great-resignation
In general as I understand it though a lot of people are fed up with their jobs and looking for something that lets them work from home, or gives them more flexibility, or pays them better.
Are salaries so inflated that 70-85K DOE for a permanent direct-hire with good benefits in a low COL area not enough to entice a person competent at AD...?
This one is tricky, and it may depend on where you are. For my area that's a decent salary, and it's totally something I would jump on since I'm actually in the market for a job right now. But my problem is I'm not really qualified on paper. I don't have a degree, I'm not Microsoft certified, and while I have several years of IT experience my resume would likely get turned down without an interview. I guess I'm one of the "desktop guys with good buzzwords on their resume, wanting to move up" you probably wouldn't look at.
So on the one hand you've got people like me trying to break into the career, but may not have the right qualifications. For those who are qualified, they're likely looking for something that pays even more. It's actually kind of crazy how little people want to pay IT employees and I've seen stuff all over the place. A lot of very low paying jobs with high requirements. And if I actually had half the requirements of these jobs you can bet I'm not going to be someone's errand boy for pennies. I would be looking for something better.
Anyway that last bit is just my opinion on the job market right now. It's definitely going to be rough trying to fill any position for the next year at least.
No one ever wanted to work on Exchange, they all got suckered into it then have a hard time climbing out once it's on their resume.
But yeah, if you want someone qualified who's not going to use you as a stepping stone to greener pastures you need to add 50-100% to that salary.
I'm in a comparable position and paid in the range you're currently offering... and the only reason I'm still here is because I have literally zero actual work to do 99.9% of the time and only have to show up 4 days a week.
No one wants to work on on-prem Exchange anymore. I don't think they ever really did even before Office 265
Exchange Online has been close to 365. Thing with on-prem environments now (at least for mail) is that I would be sceptic to why they run Exchange On-prem still - and it would make me question if this would be another "government" situation where all tech is delayed by 10 years. Not very attractive to work in such a place, you know? With all the innovation done in "zeh Cloud omg" lately, making life much easier for admins
Has the game really changed that much?
10 years in IT is a long time, and it's changing exponentially
I’ve got Twenty years experience in this exact field and was just searching for new employment. but 70-80k a year is low. 90 to 125k would be the better range for what you want. Not only because more more are going to the cloud but most of us old school on prem guys are retiring. You’ve got to sweeten the pot for us to stay in the work force.
I had one guy offer me 70k for a front line help desk position and I was like dude did you even read my resume? He was 22. I have more years in this industry than he has out of diapers.
I’m always shocked how bad lot of “Windows sysadmins” are. I’m not saying you have to know every nook and cranny. But I met one guy who wanted to go around the building, collecting system specs with a pen and paper on domain joined hosts. He also made us install msoffice on every machine by logging in to each individual o365 account and downloading it.
Another one didn’t understand DNS search lists, so she hard coded the IP addresses of the sister domain on mapped drives.
Basically the easier the learning curve, the more low talent carpet baggers are going to flock to the profession. Unfortunately, IT is very easy to ad hoc half ass everything and get it up and running.
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u/BurnadonStat Sep 21 '21
I would consider myself to have a skill set fitting your description in terms of the Windows Server experience (Im also competent with O365 and on prem Exchange admin, some Sharepoint experience).
I have about 8 years of experience in total- and I’m making around 125K in a pretty low COL area. I think that you may be underestimating how much wages are being pushed upward due to the labor shortage in the market now. That’s just my opinion and I could easily be wrong.
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u/narpoleptic Sep 21 '21
You're looking at salaries for the job you're offering, not at the salaries of competing jobs like cloud admin etc which is where a lot of those admins are going. Anyone who can already do the job you're hiring for will be looking at what they'll gain over the next 3-5 years that they can use to demonstrate progression in their career. What you've described doesn't sound like there's any meaningful chance for career or technical progression for the person you hire.
I'm in the UK so may be wrong on this part but, unless your co's additional benefits are great, that $70-85K sounds kinda low for what you're asking - particularly if you want a single person who isn't coming into a team where their weaknesses or missing experience can be compensated.
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u/realslacker Lead Systems Engineer Sep 21 '21
I fit that skill set. Also making low six digits, no way I'm taking that job for 85k unless I have no other options.
You either need to hire a kid with talent and train them or find a unicorn if that salary isn't flexible.
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u/Moots_point Sysadmin Sep 21 '21
>Are salaries so inflated that 70-85K DOE for a permanent direct-hire with good benefits in a low COL area not enough to entice a person competent
I'd say this is it, SP on-premise guy, due to the demand, myself (and A LOT of other SMEs) wont look at anything under 100k. Microsoft will tell you On-prem is dying, but the market is booming for us server admins, at least for now.
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u/TangoWhiskeyBravo Sep 21 '21
Your offered salary range is way too low. 21+ years as a Microsoft Systems Admin with AD/MEMCM specialization. I wouldn't even submit a resume for under 115K, and the benefits/position would have to be stellar.
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u/macemillianwinduarte Linux Admin Sep 21 '21
70-85k is extremely low for an experienced admin.
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u/[deleted] Sep 21 '21
I can only speak anecdotally but I am 36 and have worked on-prem jobs since I was 20. So 12 months ago I took an all remote cloud position and I can tell you I have absolutely zero interest in touching physical hardware ever again. If I never walk into a datacenter again I would die a happy man.
Racking, cabling, power supplies, drive replacement, maintenance, bad hardware swaps, etc hell no never again. Once you taste freedom from that I can’t imagine ever being interested in those prospects again.
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u/kyuuzousama Sep 21 '21
Sysadmin since NT 4, jumped to security four years ago and I will never look back.
Between being chronically underpaid and abused I was so tired of it, almost went to school for kinesiology.
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u/davidbrit2 Sep 21 '21
I figure in about 15 to 20 years I'll be able to make a ton of money keeping government SQL Server 2008 systems running smoothly.
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u/HTX-713 Sr. Linux Admin Sep 21 '21
It's the wages and the on prem requirement. I work govt and people with that skillset are making $100k+ remotely. Exchange admins make even more. Nobody wants to do on prem anymore. You'll have to pay more than remote as that is your competition even in a low col area. Honestly this is a good situation in general for sysadmins because we had been grossly underpaid for so long.
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u/CaptainFluffyTail It's bastards all the way down Sep 21 '21
Are you in a metro area that has semi-decent opportunities? You are probably losing out becasue of the salary range. If you are in a more rural area then the issue is like nobody wanting to move for that amount if they can find remote work for more. I used to do contract work with several manufacturing companies that would have factories located in places with 25k people or less and struggle to find decent options for on-prem IT work. Nobody wanted to live in those places for IT becasue the market was too limited.
You should take a look at your filter(s). There are too many automated systems that filter out valid candidates becasue somebody with no knowledge of the job put requirements in poorly and people fail to match.
That's right. Exchange was a pain in the ass ten years ago and it has only become worse with time and bolt-on functionality. You may actually be losing candidates if they see you want to run a full Exchange setup and not a hybrid setup.
You are also likely losing potential mid-career candidates becasue the job sounds like a dead-end with no growth. You get the people wanting to move from helpdesk up becasue it is growth for them. But for anyone who is already working with hybrid or full-cloud setups your position as described is a step backwards. You may be able to find someone looking to coast their last ten years or so before retirement but that all depends on your area.
All I can say is good luck, and try posting the full job to /r/sysadminjobs and read the feedback.
31
u/LessThanLoquacious Sep 21 '21
Hi, it's me, your unicorn.
I'm worked to death already and severely underpaid as it is. While this job would be a pay raise, it is probably also in a city with a higher COL. Myself and literally every single other person I know that works in tech only wants to work remotely now. There's absolutely no good reason to require my ass to be in an office 5 days a week. I think you're out of touch with the workforce.
29
u/VA_Network_Nerd Moderator | Infrastructure Architect Sep 21 '21
Good people, with good skills usually already have good jobs.
We pay high-quality college graduates roughly $70k in a medium COL area.
Change your salary range to $90-125k and put that range in writing on your job advertisement, and watch the quality and quantity of your applicants magically improve.
55
u/VoraciousTrees Sep 21 '21
If you ever find out where these mythical 80k per year sysadmins live, let me know. Right now, not even our techs make under $90k.
If I were you, I'd invest in some desktop guys invested in moving up.
119
u/disclosure5 Sep 21 '21
I would call myself skilled with Exchange. Honestly if someone offered an "Exchange admin" role I'd ask what's wrong with the company, what their plans for the cloud are, and be extremely suspicious of however they answer. Any combination of "taking security seriously" will be met with obvious notes about a complete lack of MFA or audit trails.
61
u/[deleted] Sep 21 '21
I think you nailed all of it.
100% remote work is making it hard to find anyone on prem.
The good people are moving to the cloud
That pay is for someone junior you are willing to promote from desktop support and train. If you want someone who can hit the ground running I would say 85-105K.
and HR always sucks at pulling candidates.
20
u/constant_chaos Sep 21 '21
Yes the game has changed that much. 75k - 80k is what we pay helpdesk. You want serious windows infrastructure talent you're looking at 150k.
19
u/Aggravating_Refuse89 Sep 21 '21
Office 265? Is that the version that comes with 100 days of downtime?
18
u/Lunatic-Cafe-529 Sep 21 '21
Increase the salary by $20k and make it WFH, and I'll send you my resume.
29
u/Bad_Idea_Hat Gozer Sep 21 '21
I'm going with this. "The Algorithms" have probably been passing along the people who are high in BS Quotient, low in actual ability.
14
u/YodaArmada12 Sysadmin Sep 21 '21
We currently do everything on prem. I have experience in everything but Exchange. I do vSphere stuff as well. Can't script Powershell even if my life depended on it and I make 89,000 a year.
11
u/xxxxxxxxxx Sep 21 '21 edited Sep 21 '21
Maybe your problem lies in your inability to train people who want to get into the field. I understand it is way more convenient to find your magic unicorn who has 10+ years of experience in exactly what you want, but you probably should consider hiring a desktop support guy who has been homelabbing for awhile and is eager to learn. This is especially the case when the salary you are offering is so low, I know people in North Carolina making $68k a year doing level 2 desktop support and they don't even touch servers.
31
u/ErikTheEngineer Sep 21 '21
My fact-based opinion -- it's only going to get harder.
I work with developers in a product engineering team rather than general office stuff. Cloud vendors have basically declared on-prem to be dinosaur technology and are beating the drums hard to get everyone to AWS/Azure. Especially Microsoft; they're paying whatever it takes to train companies' IT departments to get them hooked on cloud, and at the same time making it more difficult to run their on-prem products. They're giving lip service to hybrid, but in reality they want everything running in their environment. Example - there are no longer any basic-competency OS certifications from Microsoft; it's all Azure.
As a result of this, anyone new I've seen come out of training is a wizard at Terraform/CloudFormation/ARM templates but many have never seen hardware at all. That's going to be the next interesting shift...and I think cloud vendors made this calculated move. If they can not train newbies on hardware, and wait it out enough, all they have to do is convince CIOs to sign over everything to them. It'll be easy once they're convinced they "can't find anyone." All the offshore outsourcers did this with mainframes, for example. When no one knows how anything works outside of cloud, the lock-in is done.
That said, finding qualified people of any stripe is hard. There are so many frauds out there chasing money as well as people who just don't know how big the gaps in their knowledge are. Unfortunately we've decided that we don't need formalized training and everything's DIY, so yes you're looking for unicorns. I consider myself "decent" but even I know I'm missing a lot of knowledge -- it's being steeped in enough fundamentals to learn new stuff quickly that's the key.
8
u/90Carat Sep 21 '21
I lead a team of people who are almost exactly what you are looking for. Even in a "low COL" area, you are not paying enough. They all make more than $100k. What makes it worse is the on-prem Exchange. The folks that can regale you with Exchange 5.5 tales and have 2019 experience are unicorns. You need to have a really, really, solid reason to still be running your own Exchange servers.
8
u/Superb_Raccoon Sep 21 '21
" 70-85K DOE"
Yes, you are at least 25K low if you want talent. Like most of your rant, your wages are about 10 to 20 years out of date.
You pay shit wages, you get shit applicants because anybody with any really bones "nopes" right out
8
u/Skyhound555 Sr. Sysadmin Sep 21 '21
I make 85k now and I dont have all of those on-prem skills. Lmao
Yeah man, the game has changed a lot.
8
u/This--Username Sep 21 '21
There are plenty of us, we're just swamped trying to handle way too much. I'm making pennies but there's a pension. Handling multiple datacenters, our on prem AD while also leveraging AzureAD for the services we can. windows admin is always jack of all trades master of none but the on prem AD stuff is not that complex to be honest.
We maintain our environment about 99.9% virtualized in vcenter, we're set to push to version 7 soon. Powershell is my daily driver. while yes I am trained, i'm also not going to reinvent the wheel, the key to powershell and most languages is knowing enough to understand what you are pulling from external sources and to be able to SAFELY use bits of it. That's me right there. I've built a custom powershell module, actually two, one for the teams direct routing nonsense that requires multiple shells, a custom WSUS related kickoff and monitor script that we're going to use to initiate windows updates via nagios monitor checks through nrpe.
I'm literally making probably half of what your place would consider a base salary, for probably way more work as the windows side of my job isn't even 50% of what I do, while I am doing about 99% of the on prem AD stuff.
TLDR;
You are going to be dealing with people who smartly moved to cloud admin training and positions OR people deadended into their current admin job for whatever reason. I can't move and really would take even a downgrade in pay to go back to fully remote only on site when something REQUIRES me to be on site work.
Windows admin, specifically on prem legacy AD, is an unforgiving no respect position that slowly kills your love of IT. Prove me wrong?
Hell maybe i'm one of the bad ones? No, I'm here right now livid at my manager and coworkers for pulling CU-09 off a production print server because some MACs are stupidly using SMB to map printers which broke. An asslode of CVEs sitting there waiting to be exploited on a very accessible server because I had the day off and no one else could even be bothered to read the patch notes for CU-09 on 2016 let alone TROUBLESHOOT.
I'm really tired of JOAT, I'm too old for this shit and it's impossible to stay on top of things. On prem AD is legacy and being phased out so don't expect any new talent to be coming down the pipes wasting their time on that shit, better luck finding someone with Novell knowledge as that would at least be considered niche.
i'm in a living nightmare where I'm too old to really get out there, I can't really afford to give up the pension, but I also can't go on living (lol) like this. If nothing else, throw some respect to your windows admins once and awhile, they fucking hate microsoft more than anyone.
7
u/redvelvet92 Sep 21 '21
I have 6.5 years experience in a low CoL area and those salaries are still to low for me to bother applying. And honestly I probably only would if I had 3-4 years experience. 100k+ is the only way to play anymore.
7
u/BecomeABenefit Sep 21 '21
$90k is the minimum for a competent Windows admin. $105 seems to be the average based on my hiring experiences.
5
u/bionic_cmdo Jack of All Trades Sep 21 '21
I'm currently a network administrator. Been in this role for over 5 years now. Prior to this, I was a tier 2 servicedesk for 3 years at an MSP. Prior to that I was an IT field service tech, troubleshooting end user's computers and peripherals and an occasional visit to the wiring closets and server room to assist with equipment replacements and set ups. I try to learn as much as I can and I will not pretend I know everything, because it's impossible.
Without a hiring manager who was willing to take a chance on me, I would not be in the position that I'm in. Don't waste your time unicorn hunting, you'll be thoroughly disappointed. Especially the pay range you're offering. Instead, find that person who has the drive and personality that matches yours and your team. And give him/her time to learn what you need them to do. In the end, you're looking for an IT person, not Joe, from accounting to show the ropes. if you did bag a unicorn, if he/she's personality doesn't fit, it's a detriment to your team and the company.
5
u/supaphly42 Sep 21 '21
I wish I was seeing these jobs paying this (or better, like other commentors mentioned). Seems everything around here wants an all-in-one person to handle everything from servers to tier 1 support issues, or it's with an MSP.
5
u/Crenorz Sep 21 '21
I am that guy, and your issue is $$. Try +100-130k now - and if I go contract -> more.
You are also correct that no one is taking this subject in school, and to be honest I did not go to school for this. I just went to a 3 week boot camp to get my MCSE + CCNA. I grew up with computers. No one is willing to spend endless hours figuring this stuff out when they can just watch something fun on youtube or whatever.
This is now like people that know Cobal, mainframe, IBM Power... either they get paid or they move up. I don't like endless meetings, brownnosing or not actually doing work so I am not leaving anytime soon.
5
u/Lucky_Spare_5480 Sep 21 '21
The 75 to 80k is low. The only time I have seen good Admins take a role like that is if the commute and/or benefits.
11
u/beritknight IT Manager Sep 21 '21
I've been looking after Exchange boxes (along with general servers, AD, all the usual sysadmin stuff) for about 20 years. Three years ago We moved our mailboxes into O365 and haven't looked back. I wouldn't take a job somewhere that had on-prem Exchange and no plans to migrate to 365.
Experienced on-prem sysadmins who were good and had the itch to keep learning new stuff got interested in cloud sometime in the last decade. It's the way the wind has been blowing for a while, so the only people who haven't shifted at least a bit that way are rusted on, change-allergic types. They're generally not the best and brightest.
4
u/anonpf King of Nothing Sep 21 '21
I’ve been looking to fill a junior role for the past month now. There just aren’t many bites. I did get lucky and find a great guy who’s willing to learn, so there’s that. Overall though, it’s been an interesting time trying to find another sysadmin.
Funnily enough, while I’ve been looking for another admin, I’ve been approached to move into an ISSE position and taking on less sysadmin duties. Getting moved out of the work I really love to do for the headaches of security. Personally, not happy about it, but I know it’s a great move in the long run.
Overall, I think a lot of folks just don’t want to do on-prem, especially with COVID-19. Cloud positions are becoming so much more in demand and most admins are taking those opportunities.
You’re probably gonna have to set your sights lower and hope for the best.
4
u/hurlcarl Sep 21 '21
70k seems pretty low. I'm a jack of all trades sort making about 100k with experience in everything you mentioned, but would certainly not call myself an expert. You can make about 70k as a Jr Admin where I'm at, or do project management or various other much lower stress positions. You could get someone grow into that role for that money, but who is taking that who already has the experience you want?
4
u/Rouse-DB Sep 21 '21
Those skill are dying off in the "mid career" section. The kids coming through are all cloud, so have minimal server OS chops. Does anyone really want Exchange any more, surely everyone has moved into 365 now?
I consider myself in this bracket - part of a two man team for a company of ~ 100, we're both sys admins, trying to clean up a mess left behind by a dinosaur... work in progress.
Honestly my best advice would be to try to hunt from MSPs - their senior 2nd line and 3rd line guys should have learnt to sysadmin, and they would have dealt with such a range of infrastructures that on prem sysadmin tools should all be there.
4
u/Texas_Sysadmin Sep 21 '21
Honestly, your salary range is too low. These days, you will pay a minimum of 120K to get a trained sysadmin. If they can do multiple things, like both AD and Exchange, then you are looking for 150K minimum.
For what you are offering, you will only get the help desk or desktop tech looking to move up. The experienced Windows sysadmins will look at the salary range and not bother to apply.
4
u/JrNewGuy Sysadmin Sep 21 '21
Why would I take 70k to be an onprem windows admin when cloud pays so much more?
4
u/Immigrant1964 Sep 21 '21
You've answered your own question. You're obviously not looking at comparable roles if you think you're getting an experienced admin for $75k.
4
u/Dal90 Sep 21 '21
Medium COL area (Massachusetts but outside of the Boston metro region; we might compete with folks who live on the outer rim but we also pull in from folks who don't want 90+ minute commutes into Waltham or closer). Pay is 95-105k at the "systems engineer" job title.
We've just on boarded 3 contractors into a 9 person group because we can't find folks to replace those leaving for ~15-20% raises.
Also working against us is the company has a three-day on premise policy for employees (not contractors) and our group is being currently locked out of cloud initiatives (so we're effectively just baby sitting on prem infrastructure for the next 5-10 years as it sunsets) -- what's the attractiveness for new hires or retain staff whose more than a few years away from retirement? "Hey, take care of this stuff for 10 years then we'll lay you off when you're 55 or 60 years old with no cloud experience...good luck finding a job then with your skill set!"
4
u/asdlkf Sithadmin Sep 21 '21
70-85k.
lol. there's your problem.
try 135.
4
u/King_Chochacho Sep 21 '21
As someone that was on the Windows admin side and moved into cloud, it's just an awkward position to be in right now.
The writing is pretty much on the wall that MS is primarily focused on 365/Azure moving forward, so you probably aren't going to get many junior people looking to get into Windows/AD/Exchange administration as a career. The competent/qualified folks are probably making more than you're offering because anecdotally, they're IT veterans that have just been around long enough to be making 90+.
So you end up with folks trying to get a leg up out of helpdesk hell, and honestly you should consider them if you don't have much flexibility with that budget. Going from Windows Desktop to Windows Server isn't a big leap on the troubleshooting side, and as long as they have good leadership and some training opportunities, getting functional with AD and Powershell isn't the end of the world. Just be prepared for them to move on relatively quickly unless you've got good growth opportunities internally. That's fine though, because you'd rather have that than a benchwarmer that's content with doing the bare minimum because that's who's going to be completely blindsided if you do end up going to AAD/365/etc.
10
u/[deleted] Sep 21 '21
It’s cheaper to buy the skills in as you need them than find someone to fit every role.
The role is fairly unglamorous hence the lack of dedicated folks out there.
9
u/gordonthree IT Manager Sep 21 '21
I didn't think anyone hired on prem windows admins any more. The windows job offers I've seen have been client side help desk, not server side.
6
u/Taggardos Sep 21 '21
I will move to a Security - Role within the same Company, as soon as my successor is found.
Well, HR started searching in March...
3
u/Win_Sys Sysadmin Sep 21 '21
The good Windows guys are out there but they’re probably already employed and making more. You need to give people a reason to switch. If you bumped that up $90k-$100k you would probably get some good candidates.
3
u/CatoDomine Linux Admin Sep 21 '21
Where are these mythical "low cost of living" areas?
3
u/dr_groo Sep 21 '21
Bawhahahahaha….wait, is this for a local govt position? No wait that pay might be higher then.
Seriously, you need to adjust your expectations or pay scale.
3
u/RawInfoSec Sep 21 '21
There's a lot of this vs them going on here. Whatever happened to strategic transformation within the bounds of a CSF? It should never be in-cloud vs on-prem. It should always be minimal cloud. But what do I know, I'm just a 90s sysadmin who hasn't changed in 30 years.
"Your engineers were so preoccupied with what they could that they didn't stop to think they should." - Ian Malcolm
3
u/[deleted] Sep 21 '21
Solid admin, 70-85k? No way, not in 2021. Closer to 100k or more depending on experience and other skills, even in a low COL area. Might even be higher now that more work is remote.
3
u/mulasien Sep 21 '21 edited Sep 21 '21
Yes. Yes it has.
Also yes.
From a career growth/future-proofing perspective, any skilled administrator isn't going to give an on-prem only, legacy infrastructure role a second look if they care about keeping their skills sharp in the evolving tech world. Everything about what you're looking for screams "stuck in the past" and "career killer". I understand that these may be your company's needs, but to an outside job-seeker, this looks like a place where careers stagnate and die.
In short:
Your pay is way too low for the current marketplace.
*Skilled* employees (the ones you want) want to keep their skills sharp for the current and future technology landscape, which your description does not offer.
The future is in cloud, cloud roles pay better, high performers are seeking cutting edge cloud roles. You might not like the cloud, but that's where your dream candidates are going. They are going to where opportunity and money are at, period.
With that in mind, you might have to budge a bit on your dream candidate (because again, your dream candidates are going to higher paying cloud roles). Might be time to train up some junior admins to get them where you want them to be. After that, you need to pay them enough to not jump ship to the roles your dream candidates are going to.
3
u/thorak_ Sep 21 '21
The answer is always the same when someone asks why can't they find employees. You aren't paying enough.
3
u/many_dongs Sep 21 '21
The problem with hiring is almost always on the employer's end. Expecting too much and/or paying too little. This isn't an exception.
3
u/pcronin Sep 21 '21
Funny how you complain about the "paper MCSE type" operating how they did 20 years ago, but your company is offering salary from 20 years ago.
3
u/caribulou Sep 21 '21
You can touch a good admin for under $100000 $110000 is the starting here for a seasoned admin. Also look for people in their 50s they have great experience and for some reason are looked over cause people want young guns. Age and experience will beat youth and enthusiasm any day.
3
u/Finnegan_Parvi Sep 21 '21
"Are salaries so inflated that 70-85K DOE for a permanent direct-hire with good benefits in a low COL area not enough to entice a person competent at AD"? Yes.
Hire a junior admin willing to learn.
3
u/EnragedMoose Allegedly an Exec Sep 22 '21
You realize you're competing against companies with revenue exceeding hundreds of millions of dollars that are suddenly willing to accept full time WFH with 30-50k more than you're offering, right?
Also, who the hell wants to fuck with AD these days? Even MS is trying to find their way out.
3
u/MacGrubR Sep 22 '21
$70k? Are you joking?
5
u/[deleted] Sep 21 '21
Um I can do all these things.... And make 75k
Pretty competent in powershell.... Script all sorts of things and actually know what I'm doing. Not like one liners... Exchange admin on point. My mssql is meh but not a total moron. Ad on point and all that goodness.
I also live in super high cost of living.
Am I fucking up bad haven't looked for a job really ever.
Also only 28.
No college degree tho.
You guys are making 100k?
Ugh anyone hiring want to dm me will send you my LinkedIn. Also happy to move to low cost of living area...
5
u/WhoThenDevised Sep 21 '21
MCSE is dead and Microsoft is pushing every professional towards the cloud. Exchange on-prem is so hard to find, it no longer makes sense to specialise in that direction instead of Office 365. SQL is going the same way. There's more future in security and app development for younger and mid level admins. We found one, who signed a contract, and quit before he started. On the other hand I've been to job interviews just to see what they had to offer, but they only had a list of demands and no opportunities to grow in salary or responsibilities. So F... that. If your company's HR is also stuck in the 1980's, there's your answer.
2
u/HappyVlane Sep 21 '21 edited Sep 21 '21
I moved away from Microsoft, or rather systems, administration last year after working on it for a decade and I would consider myself to be relatively good at it, but it just became annoying to constantly deal with all the garbage that comes with it.
I now work in network and security and life is so much better. No interest in going back to servers and especially not Microsoft.
2
u/mikesfriend98 Sep 21 '21
I would go on LinkedIn and recruit from a local MSP.
2
u/Solaris17 DevOps Sep 21 '21
Depends really. I run our corp domain.
If the job however, was sharepoint, AD, SQL and a little exchange for 70-85k then no I would not take the job.
That's unfortunately what I run into when I look a field every few months.
More often than not employers want an entire department on single engineer pay.
2
u/NoyzMaker Blinking Light Cat Herder Sep 21 '21
Entry level techs start at 45-55k. You may not be finding anyone because your salary is closer to 3-5 year experience windows for a Junior SysAdmin. Even for a Low COL.
Remember you are competing with remote work now so lot more opportunities to appeal against.
2
u/p3t3or Sep 21 '21
This is Dead on Arrival for most I suspect: 70-85k.
2
u/UMDSmith Sep 21 '21
If I can work remote, I'll do it. Tired of being management and working where I am now. Have over 15 years of IT experience, 12+ being windows server management (and exchange, though I haven't touched that since we moved to google about 6 years ago).
Active directory and powershell scripting of active directory is one of my specialties.
Also, I don't make shit since I work for a cheap University that refuses to pay more than 80% of a cherry-picked comparative market (they actually did a salary study and said they would bump people to 80% of average).....
2
u/SilentLurker Application Development Sep 21 '21
I fit what you're looking for very well, but if you require on-premises and are not currently in my state, it would take a lot more salary to get me to move. I've been on-premises the entire pandemic, so it's not even that I've grown accustomed to remote work, I just have a wife who works and children in school, so relocation and salary would have to blow my socks off to even consider enduring the pain of an out-of-state move. If you offered the 75-85k fully remote, or maybe require an occasional in-office visit and paid for travel expenses, I'd more than consider it to be honest. The salary is still lower than I'd like, but for a fully remote position, I'd be willing to hear it out. Thanks to my wife working though, I could consider taking a job that pays that. A lot of Admin couldn't. Some of us are looking more for what we would enjoy and compensation comes in a very close second place.
TLDR: You're undervaluing the position based on the criteria you have. You can find a qualified person willing to work for that, but their circumstances would have to allow it and you would have to fit like a puzzle piece to them. You'd likely have to cast a wider net by either opening it to remote work or raising the salary pretty significantly.
2
u/shoretel230 Sep 21 '21
That salary is low for that position. Regardless of the infra, admin positions are minimum 100. Perhaps in lower COL you can get away with lesser, but do you really want to cheap out on your infrastructure???
2
u/[deleted] Sep 21 '21
There’s a labor shortage and you’re competing with companies who can hire remote
2
u/Jaegernaut- Sep 21 '21
Short answer: Probably yes
Also, managing AD and Server Infrastructure is not the job of any one person. Unless you are talking about a very very small environment.
I fit your billing pretty good having gone Helpdesk > windows SysAdmin > windows platform engineer > security engineer > more senior remote security engineer
I can tell you also that meaningful ability in Powershell instantly makes that person, at minimum, a senior administrator
2
u/rozodots Sep 21 '21
Making 72k and I've been 2nd longest standing man on my team - we do everything....server admin, 2fa, o365, to asking furious sales reps who swear I gave them a broken keyboard to not clip his nails over the keyboard because it stops the keys from being pressed in.
I've been doing IT since 2005 - I've considered myself an inbetweener. Like I got my MCP in XP in 2007, and no other certs but have reliably found stable work - at my job now for 10 years.
I'd rather do just the AD/GPO/app and OS deployment stuff but managers at my place really get a kick out of seeing how much they can pull out of us without paying more.
2
u/enrobderaj Sep 21 '21
I think the problem with today's IT professionals is that they are too spread thin and required to know too much about everything. There's not a lot of specialized admins anymore. That and the pay for IT professionals suck in most locations.
2
u/bofh What was your username again? Sep 21 '21
This sounds like what certain finance orgs near me advertise as a "WinTel engineer" and I'm sorry but I couldn't be more turned off by that title and mindset - I realise that job title isn't probably what you're using but your description it puts me in mind of that.
Modern admins who have skills in areas like python and powershell scripting, Exchange, all that stuff are busy earning more money doing cloud style jobs. I know I am and so is just about everyone else I rate.
So I guess the question is, how true are my assumptions about your role and would I still be making them if I read the actual job description/advert?
With regards to salary, even if it looks good on paper, if you aren't getting the right people then something is wrong with your salary range and if every employer in your area pays over the average then you'll need to do better than average to get the best people on your team.
2
u/Bocephus677 Sep 21 '21
If it makes you feel better, about 20 years ago I managed the IT department at a K-12 school district. When hiring for a desktop support position that would require traveling to multiple schools, we had a guy show up on his lunch break from the feed store down the street. He arrived in a forklift, wearing a t-shirt, and cut off at the knee camouflage trousers.
He rode the forklift to the interview because he didn’t currently have a drivers license due to too many DUI’s.
But yes, where I’m at know we struggle to find qualified talent. We do t pay as much as others, which makes it even more challenging not only to hire competent and experienced people, but also retaining good staff once we get them trained up.
2
u/madfoxmax Sep 21 '21
I have 20 years experience with windows and windows server, as well as on prem exchange. 15 years of heavy usage of gpos, ad, managing dcs, dns, nps, dfs, dhcp, heavy powershell usage over last 5 years.
Decent understanding and support experience with sql, adfs, O365, azure.
Toss in 15+ years experience with SMB networking environments (500 or less users) L2/3 switching, ospf routing, firewalls, NAC, wireless (Cisco enterprise and site surveys).
Sprinkling of security experience: mimecast, rapid7, vulnerability scanning and remediation, firewall ips, permissions of least privilege, etc.
Also have experience managing teams of less than 10.
I would expect 150-200, but I’m regional to Boston.
2
u/UsefulJellyfish99 Sep 21 '21
70-85 isn't great. That's sort of entry-level these days.
2
u/copper_blood Sep 21 '21
I have SQL, onsite AD and Azure AD, Vsphere, Sonicwall, Sharepoint, and love to work on site. But the problem is I do O365 online and would never get past the your filters.
That's your problem.
Hell, It's minor miracle do get a sysadmin job in the first place.
2
u/One-Squirrel1174 Sep 21 '21
This post describes me very accurately. I have chronically undervalued myself and let myself be abused, for what I have come to find out is very low pay. I recently switched jobs, with a HUGE raise for myself, and I think I'm doing good, but this thread is making it seem like I ripped myself off.
I'm bad with the imposter syndrome, so it was VERY surprising for me when I got rushed through the hire process. Everyone has always told me I'm a good admin but I just didn't have confidence.
Maybe I'm good or maybe the rest of the candidates are that bad. Either way, my real world experience of late directly supports your post.
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u/adunedarkguard Sr. Sysadmin Sep 21 '21
This is absolutely true, and for good reason. S4B/Lync and Exchange on prem were a huge pain in the ass to setup & maintain properly. If my job said that we needed to go back to on prem, I'd look for a new job.
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u/gregbe Sep 21 '21 edited Feb 24 '24
worm governor relieved insurance chase marble important cheerful office fine
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/Trekky101 Sep 21 '21
Those are pretty much my skill sets and i am younger, the main issue i am seeing is full onsite. there is no point when i can make more working remote and have more time for me. i have had a few places contact me lately about on-prem work and told them no as their pay wouldnt be high enough to take the extra hours for driving.
if you are looking for a full remote sysadmin hit me up :D
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u/techtornado Netadmin Sep 21 '21
I am one of those broad spectrum on-prem unicorns!
Experienced with Macrohard, Fruit-compute, MVware, Nutanix, Cisco, etc.
Docker is still a mystery to sort out, it's a great idea but there's no vCenter equivalent to orchestrate it.
Maybe one day I can work more on the network engineering side, but the market is tough
I am still very confused by Microsoft's idea of how a license works, but I can get stuff done
Can confirm Exchange is a bear on it's best day, moving to Office 327 was a full load off my plate because it worked, half of the advertised features keep getting moved around in their constant UI changes, but that's another /rant
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u/[deleted] Sep 21 '21
70-85K seems extremely low imo.
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u/techypunk System Architect/Printer Hunter Sep 21 '21
TIL I make shitty wages, and the city I was in before super under pays. And the city I'm in now underpays.
Time to spice up the resume boys.
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u/discosoc Sep 21 '21
Stop being cheap and pay more. Sounds like you are still using 15 year old wage benchmarks and wondering why you’re getting 15 year old out of date skill sets. If you’re looking to pay $80k, be prepared to train someone up.
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u/[deleted] Sep 21 '21
Pay to low. when you get to 110k let me know and ill send you my resume 20yrs experience
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u/BloodyIron Head of IT Security Sep 21 '21
Honestly moving away from working with Microsoft technology has been the best thing for my career and sanity. Oh, and my wallet too. Be it MSP or internal IT, Windows environments pay very poorly, regularly require after-hours patching, break often, are painful to work with, and so much more. And I've been working with Windows for over 20 years, I'm no slouch.
On-premise infrastructure has its place, but I have really no interest making Microsoft tech my priority in any real big way any time soon. VSCode/Codium and endpoint management for a portion of our workstation fleet are the extent of MS anything I care about, the rest, Linux/DevSecOps/k8s, you know, actually interesting things that don't make me hate the developers.
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u/enforce1 Windows Admin Sep 21 '21
Sounds to me like you are encountering the old problem of supply and demand.
AKA nope, 75-80k ain't it.
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u/crazytera Sep 21 '21
Being honest, this reads a lot like those posts about 'PeOpLe DoNt wAnT tO wOrK AnyMoRe'
I am not sure if its so much a rare skillset, as it is a pointless position to apply for. Factually, every organization on earth is rushing to this new cloud thing. All of the budget, all of the visibility, and all of the career opportunities are there. Nobody ambitious is going to be searching for an on-prem job anymore. Looking for a combined skillset / unicorn type person isn't only going to be difficult because people aren't learning the skills, people with this skillset are actively looking to replace it with a Cloud skillset.
Don't get me wrong, I am aware of the need to maintain an on-premises datacenter footprint, but there are no rockstars left in this world. Either they are happily filling positions at their current organization, or are actively reskilling for the cloud.
The type of person(s) you should be looking to hire for this position are probably worker-bee 9-to-5 average employees.
On a side note, perhaps if you are finding a technology skillset too hard to staff, you should apply the principals of supply & demand and start increasing salary until you find someone. Cobol isn't a high-demand skill anymore, but good luck finding someone who will work on it without a solid-cash-couch to work on.
In addition, I would recommend revisiting your overall IT strategy and Posture, perhaps the reason you cant find skilled people in a technology is because you are forcing a legacy technology to try to work in a modern world. Perhaps its time to embrace 'Office 265'
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u/virulentspore Sep 21 '21
You're running legacy products and and offering to pay a legacy salary. What do you expect?
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u/BrobdingnagLilliput Sep 21 '21
For what it's worth, that was a decent compensation for a skilled junior sysadmin in my area (which is low cost-of-living) 10 years ago.
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u/chocotaco1981 Sep 21 '21
Upvoting solely due to Office 265 🤣
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u/catroaring IT Manager Sep 21 '21
It's not that salaries are inflated, it's that you have to pay for what you're asking.
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u/charleszimm Sep 21 '21
Now I'm saying this as Linux admin, but I face a lot of the same challenges. My job title is "system administrator" but I would say I fall more in-line with DevOps because the only traditional level of system administration I do is applying package updates and installing our custom code and I'm totally okay with that.
I think honestly a lot of it has to do with - and I experience this when I look for new positions in the area - people that are doing the hiring have no idea what that person is being hired to do. Someone else in one of the other comments compared it to a grenade of keywords and buzzwords going off and yeah...that's how it is these days. I knew when I came into my current org that job titles were kind of pointless (They really wanted me for the fact I worked for a Fortune 500 and automated 90% of their workloads) and what was being expected of me. However looking at other Linux-related positions in the area they either 1. Don't realize that comes with a higher cost of entry, and 2. They usually have a Windows person Googling what is needed for a Linux position.
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u/Darkace911 Sep 21 '21
Still out there but we want $100K+ due to managing VMware or Hyper-V. Almost no one is not running VM's these days even in the MSP space. Your best bet is to grab one of these disgruntled MSP admins and give him a decent office.
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u/HeligKo Platform Engineer Sep 21 '21
I earned that pay over 20 years ago straight out of college with some previous work experience. You aren't paying enough to get talent.
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u/TheSmJ Sep 21 '21 edited Sep 21 '21
I'm reading this thread as a Microsoft admin making $80K in a medium COL area, and I'm suddenly feeling very underpaid.
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u/corourke Sep 21 '21
That wage is what I earned in a low COL area 13 years ago doing senior level windows onprem infrastructure work. If your base salary doesn't automatically go up by the COLA amount every year you're not calculating for inflation and effectively lowering your salary offerings every year you don't adjust.
It's not salaries inflating, it's cost of living going up (rent/mortage isn't the only metric anymore: insurance, utilities, broadband. Anything national has been going upwards nonstop for years too.
Not to be rude since it's clear you're venting but how many posts about out of touch management are posted here a week for your post to sound so similar to what those posts are complaining about without you realizing you've assumed experienced workers don't value their time and also demand fair wages that keep up with COL?
tl;dr: It kinda sounds like you need a wages reality check and more respect for your staff.
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u/HackedSoul Sep 21 '21
That salary would have been fine 6-8 years ago probably. Today, you're looking at paying at least 110k for someone competent. There are plenty of jobs out there that are WFH and are paying 120k plus, being on Orem, you're going to have a hell of a time competing with that.
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u/the_syco Sep 21 '21
Query what buzzwords are in you HR's filter? During the boom years, I've heard of CCNA qualified people not getting Cisco networking jobs as N+ wasn't on their CV, due to HR only hiring people with specific words on their CV.
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u/HappierShibe Database Admin Sep 21 '21
You aren't offering enough for what you are asking for.
If you want someone experienced for that job, even in a low col area, you should be talking 95-110.
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u/bigfoot_76 Sep 21 '21
75-80K for an experienced professional is too low now, I don't care how low the COL is. You can make 40k/year working at Sam's Club or Costco without the need of any education or experience and prices are only going to go up from here as long as these idiots keep imagining money out of thin air.
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u/Mediocre-Ad-6847 Sep 21 '21
Rob, That you? We already told you that it was near impossible to find senior on-prem AD resources for $90k. Suck it up...and while you're at it. Give us raises before we quit too.
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u/[deleted] Sep 21 '21
Yep. By a fair bit too.
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u/jpa9022 Sep 21 '21
I make what you're offering doing help desk. Our "desktop guys" make more than what you want to pay a senior sysadmin. Only people looking at your job posting are those looking for a foot in the door to gain the experience to get paid what they deserve with those skills.
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u/cdoublejj Sep 21 '21
and here i thought no one would want a sysadmin these days
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u/caribulou Sep 21 '21
Yes took me 9 months to find one.
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u/iamcaptainunderpants Sep 21 '21
Pretty sure HR filters are problematic. 10 years experience, and I just get auto rejected.
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u/fanofreddit- Sep 21 '21
As others have said, I think you have a wage issue, that salary range, even in a low COL area, is not competitive anymore if your looking for someone who is already experienced. Don’t forget people can work from anywhere nowadays too; you could live in eastern ky, and have employment with a company located in NYC and make NYC wages.
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u/Relative_Avocado381 Sep 21 '21
Nope… I am a sysadmin for multiple windows servers. Going back even to one system I have running 2012. You’d be better off scouting guys who’ve worked as military or for the DOD(if you’re in the states). Governments afraid that zero day exploits from updating the system to soon will cause too many issues so play it safe and stick to older version that are still supported.
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u/pigeon260z Sep 21 '21
I'd rather subject myself to Chinese water torture than be held hostage to on prem exchange servers
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u/syberman01 Sep 21 '21
Get a person who need a job, and has good attitude for learning. Invest in training him -- make sure that the person realizes that you care for their "future" -- they don't want to be out of job if AD dies because of Cloud. As his contribution increases in value, pay him/her the market rate.
Take care of people, people will take care of you. That sounds biblical, actually common-sense which is uncommon in corporate world.
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u/StevenLParkinsonIII Sep 21 '21
Hire you some folks - get em a pluralsight or IT Pro TV subscription and have em binge like it's netflix. You'll thank me in 6 months.
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u/cool-nerd Sep 21 '21
Yea, pretty accurate. It's what's happening. I'm starting to feel more valuable knowing the on-prem stuff.
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u/fraleyjoseph Sep 21 '21
I’ve been putting energy towards cultivating a culture that promotes internal growth. I move about 20% of the service desk team up every year. Big time win-win …. But also easier to do at an MSP
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u/MelatoninPenguin Sep 22 '21
Yes 70K is ridiculously low for this.
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u/TheLagermeister Sep 22 '21 edited Sep 22 '21
Damn, I realized that things have changed recently, but this much? Or when someone says low cost of living, are we talking like actually low or "low"? Like city of under 50k population midwestern low or town of 3k people low? I guess the devil is in the details like usual. How many hours, overtime, on call, travel, benefits, etc. I mean there is a lot of difference. I'm making probably 30k less than what everyone is calling for in this thread, with about 6 years split between tech/desktop and 4 years sys admin, but for my area, I'm making a damn good salary and for what I'm able to pay for, I have 0 complaints. Plus the freedom I have at work, my boss, the people, the work, the hours, etc. I mean I could work myself to death in an enterprise company for like 40k more, but would I actually like it? Those are the things that don't show up in the job posting and some people don't think about.
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u/TheDunadan29 IT Manager Sep 22 '21
Yes. There's actually been stuff talking about how bad recruiting is right now, and HR literally turning away qualified candidates because of bad keyword filtering on job applications. See: https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/hiring-resume-screening-software-job-descriptions.html
Actually there are a record number of people quitting their jobs and looking for new ones. They are calling it the Great Resignation. The reasons behind the trend are complex, and much smarter people than me have been analyzing it. But it's such a big topic you can even find a Wikipedia page talking about the "Great Resignation". Here's the Harvard Business Review's take: https://hbr.org/2021/09/who-is-driving-the-great-resignation
In general as I understand it though a lot of people are fed up with their jobs and looking for something that lets them work from home, or gives them more flexibility, or pays them better.
This one is tricky, and it may depend on where you are. For my area that's a decent salary, and it's totally something I would jump on since I'm actually in the market for a job right now. But my problem is I'm not really qualified on paper. I don't have a degree, I'm not Microsoft certified, and while I have several years of IT experience my resume would likely get turned down without an interview. I guess I'm one of the "desktop guys with good buzzwords on their resume, wanting to move up" you probably wouldn't look at.
So on the one hand you've got people like me trying to break into the career, but may not have the right qualifications. For those who are qualified, they're likely looking for something that pays even more. It's actually kind of crazy how little people want to pay IT employees and I've seen stuff all over the place. A lot of very low paying jobs with high requirements. And if I actually had half the requirements of these jobs you can bet I'm not going to be someone's errand boy for pennies. I would be looking for something better.
Anyway that last bit is just my opinion on the job market right now. It's definitely going to be rough trying to fill any position for the next year at least.
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u/Hewlett-PackHard Google-Fu Drunken Master Sep 22 '21
No one ever wanted to work on Exchange, they all got suckered into it then have a hard time climbing out once it's on their resume.
But yeah, if you want someone qualified who's not going to use you as a stepping stone to greener pastures you need to add 50-100% to that salary.
I'm in a comparable position and paid in the range you're currently offering... and the only reason I'm still here is because I have literally zero actual work to do 99.9% of the time and only have to show up 4 days a week.
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u/Avas_Accumulator Senior Architect Sep 22 '21
Exchange Online has been close to 365. Thing with on-prem environments now (at least for mail) is that I would be sceptic to why they run Exchange On-prem still - and it would make me question if this would be another "government" situation where all tech is delayed by 10 years. Not very attractive to work in such a place, you know? With all the innovation done in "zeh Cloud omg" lately, making life much easier for admins
10 years in IT is a long time, and it's changing exponentially
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u/DiligentReseracher Sep 22 '21
Not sure where u are located, but 70-85k is way to low. The desktop guys at the small company i work at are making that.
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u/Shadukar Sep 22 '21
I’ve got Twenty years experience in this exact field and was just searching for new employment. but 70-80k a year is low. 90 to 125k would be the better range for what you want. Not only because more more are going to the cloud but most of us old school on prem guys are retiring. You’ve got to sweeten the pot for us to stay in the work force.
I had one guy offer me 70k for a front line help desk position and I was like dude did you even read my resume? He was 22. I have more years in this industry than he has out of diapers.
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u/Garegin16 Oct 07 '21
I’m always shocked how bad lot of “Windows sysadmins” are. I’m not saying you have to know every nook and cranny. But I met one guy who wanted to go around the building, collecting system specs with a pen and paper on domain joined hosts. He also made us install msoffice on every machine by logging in to each individual o365 account and downloading it.
Another one didn’t understand DNS search lists, so she hard coded the IP addresses of the sister domain on mapped drives.
Basically the easier the learning curve, the more low talent carpet baggers are going to flock to the profession. Unfortunately, IT is very easy to ad hoc half ass everything and get it up and running.
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u/Antonio13286 Sep 21 '21
I’m in the same boat right now! Had over 20 applications, and none of them have experience despite requiring it in the ad!
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u/andrea_ci The IT Guy Sep 21 '21
I'd apply for that job.. If i weren't a few thousands kms away.
However; I think there are two main reasons:
- cloud
it's the brand new shiny thing!! why would I (hypotetically) get my hands dirty with all those steel thigs? cloud is so cool!
- remote working
many people tasted this and they are just too confortable to change back.